If you have aspirations of being one of the biggest football clubs in the world, there’s a few things you need to have.
A wealthy owner is a good start, which is music to the ears of Chelsea fans with Todd Boehly at the helms, as is boasting a world-class head coach and players… perhaps the jury is still out on that one.
And when you look at the best in the business, it’s clear that you need a big old home stadium too. It can be shiny and new or old and decrepit, but the point is that it needs to be able to hold a huge number of fans.
Which brings us nicely to Stamford Bridge. As of the 2024/25 Premier League season, Chelsea’s stadium is only the ninth largest in the division, with its 40,173 capacity dwarfed by the rest of the EPL’s big guns and even the stadia of Newcastle United, Aston Villa and West Ham.
The Blues will sink further down the rankings in 2025/26 when Everton move into their 55,000 capacity Bramley-Moore Dock Stadium, so it’s high time that plans were made to increase the size of Stamford Bridge… or move to a new ground altogether.
But which of those things is most likely to happen?
Earls Court Plan Goes Up In Smoke
As of January 2025, only four Premier League teams had filled their home grounds to 100% capacity in every EPL game during the 2024/25 campaign – Crystal Palace, Fulham, Manchester City and, you guessed it, Chelsea.
There is, evidently, a huge demand for tickets to watch the Blues play at Stamford Bridge, which is proven further by the fact that there’s a pretty lengthy waiting list of fans hoping to secure a season ticket from one campaign to the next.
In that sense, moving to a big new ground – rather than trying to maximise the capacity of Stamford Bridge – would perhaps be the most economical decision.
One longstanding possibility has been the construction of a new sports stadium at a revamped Earl’s Court, which sits around one mile from Stamford Bridge. The site is up for sale for a reported £500 million, which would probably rule out the club from buying the land outright, but they could try to forge a deal that sees them rent a stadium owned by the local council – in much the same way as West Ham’s agreement to play at the London Stadium.
However, it’s thought that the government would prefer the Earl’s Court site to be turned mostly into new homes – in line with their audacious house building targets, while some space on the plot would be designated for a retail centre and park. Currently, there are no plans to integrate a sports stadium.
One solution would be to persuade the government that Stamford Bridge would be a better site for a new build estate instead. The club could even secure funding from Hammersmith and Fulham Council to help make the move to Earl’s Court happen.
Curiously, any such move would need to be green-lit by the Chelsea Pitch Owners, an organisation made up of supporters that own the freehold to the Stamford Bridge site.
They can approve or deny plans for a move to a new stadium; proving to be a thorn in the side of Roman Abramovich when he sought to take the club to pastures new.
So, unfortunately, any plans to build a new stadium seem like a distinct possible – rather than probable – at this moment in time.
Redeveloping Stamford Bridge
Plan B would be to redevelop Stamford Bridge, which would enable some – or all – of the individual stands to be increased in size.
But there would also be issues in getting that over the line. Stamford Bridge is, of course, situated in the heart of southwest London, with houses and businesses flanking the stadium. There’s also not one but two train lines that run directly parallel to the venue.
Bringing in the heavy machinery would cause untold logistical problems to those living, working and commuting in and around Stamford Bridge, while the location’s historical significance could also prove to be a stumbling block.
There is a mound dedicated to King Henry VIII in Richmond Park, which acts as a viewing platform of St Paul’s Cathedral. This feature is protected by law as a ‘scheduled monument’, and so by increasing the height of Stamford Bridge’s stands, the view would be obscured – quite how Chelsea would be able to get around that from a legal standpoint remains to be see.
Another possibility? Demolishing the current Stamford Bridge and rebuilding, digging down into the foundations to increase the stadium’s capacity with higher stands… without breaking the Henry VIII-St Paul’s Cathedral pact.
But that would be an expensive and logistically challenging construction project, which would also require Chelsea to move to a temporary home for a number of seasons.
And so, in a nutshell, the club is between a rock and a hard place. The most likely outcome is that they will, one day, acquire a parcel of land in southwest London and build a new stadium then.
But exactly where – and when – that happens is still something of a mystery…